Scions of Punjar: Session 3

(Another short session) At the end of the last session the party was headed back to the city of Punjar. Armed with the knowledge that they would most likely be facing undead the group decided to hire, if possible, a cleric or paladin etc. They made their way through the streets of Punjar on a warm, humid and rainy afternoon, finally arriving at the Bazaar of the Gods – a small section of the city comprised of various tent shrines and ramshackle temples. Through the use of an urban skill challenge the party managed to find a small unassuming temple dedicated to the Raven Queen. The group was confronted by a scarred old man and and was able to hook up (skill challenge) with a shifter avenger who had been working and living at the temple who was more than interested in the idea of taking out undead.

They made their way to the mausoleum discovering that it was indeed the family crypt of the Dev’shir family. Upon entering the main room of the mausoleum, which served as a chapel, the party discovered two rooms on the east and west walls that each served as tombs. In these rooms they found about 16 undead each, standing in rows of 8 almost like an infantry, some skeletons and some recently dead – zombies. Much of the Dev’shir family ancestry had been risen as undead. After dispatching these undead tha party moved on to the double doors on the north wall of the chapel. It was here they noticed that the doors themselves had been craved like a gnarled trunk of a massive tree, with the branches extending out onto the walls. On the branches were bricks inlaid in the wall with the names of the members of the Dev’shir family – obviously a family tree. Upon closer inspection they found the branch noticed that belongs to Lady Dev’shir had 2 blank bricks underneath her name which looked out of place. The party figured out that this was a piece to what was becoming an interesting puzzle.

The party entered the double doors and found another tomb, noticing that one of the graves had been disturbed, spying a body lying in the corner of the room. While inspecting this an apparition, a young woman half-burned and wearing what appeared to be a dress made of flames, appeared behind them and began to attack, while screaming for them to stop disturbing her. Antioch’s character, the tiefling bard Talibah, stepped up with a diplomacy check and rolled high. The group learned that she was Dugesia, the daughter of Lady Dev’shir, and that she had been burned alive but could not remember how. They also learned that she has heard many voices in the tomb, one a familiar female voice. Talibah convinced her that the group was hunting the people that had disturbed her and Dugesia begged the group to place her body back into the tomb properly. Once this was done the tormented ghost of Dugesia Dev’shir faded away.

Jester stated that he believed that it was Lady Dev’shir herself that was behind all of this mess and led the party back to the Dev’shir manner. In the middle of what was a rainy night the party stormed into the Dev’shir manner, knocking out a startled butler in the process. Lady Dev’shir, lantern in hand, dashes down the stairs in response to the noise and sees the party she had initially hired. Telling them to calm down she invites the group into the dining room and pours herself a drink, everyone else too cautious to drink anything.

Confronted with the evidence of the mismatching bricks in the family tree she seems surprised but explains to the party that she had 2 daughters, Lakaisha and Dugesia. The firstborn Dugesia being the smart well-behaved daughter and Lakaisha the, well you know, the typical black sheep. In a fit of rage one day after learning that a marriage to a very unlikable minor noble has been arranged for her and the fact that Dugesia was being groomed to take the reigns of the Dev’shir estate Lakaisha murdered her sister. One day while Dugesia was grooming her favorite horse in the family stables Lakaisha locked her in and set it ablaze. Enraged by this the family quietly has her committed in another city miles away. This was the last Lady Dev’shir has heard of her only remaining daughter.

Convinced of this and only one option remaining, the party decided to set out for the abandoned windmill in the morning.

Scions of Punjar: Session 2

I was unable to run our biweekly Punjar game last week due to a pretty bad case of food poisoning, although I suppose I got what I asked for, ordering tacos at 2am at the local 24 hour hole-in-the-wall. We also got off to a late start, by about 2 hours, due to a really long and engaging discussion about 4th Edition, mechanics and game theory in relation to previous editions of D&D. It really is exciting to see people so enthusiastic about and interested in 4th Edition. Antioch and I were recently discussing how so many new people are stepping up to the plate and getting behind the screen, and how everything really is more “accessible and elegant”.

When we last left off the party entered the bandit lair in the abandoned iron mines and had taken out a group of orc guards and forced the last remaining orc of the group to surrender. Jester and Bart used their “persuasiveness” to learn that these orcs had taken up residence in the mines when the ore dried up and the humans left. The group of bandits entered the mines and offered them easy work and decent pay as guards in exchange for use of the mines, and they learned that the bandit leader was called Haledon. He also traded, in exchange for his life, the info that the bandits have been hired by some human witch to exhume bodies for her. The party let the orc go, and as soon as he walked over to a table to gather his things he began pulling on a rope hanging from the wall. The next thing the orc knew he had a kukri buried in his face.

The party then proceeded down a long uphill corridor that contained a mine cart track, obviously an area for transporting ore. Even though the group failed perception checks, most of the group rolled higher than the mine cart trap on initiative, moving out of the way as the flaming mine cart laden with spears and axe blades came rolling down the track. Amanda’s character was able to dodge the mine cart, however the cart exploded into flames as it rolled off the end of the track and hit the wall and she took some heavy fire damage. After this the party engaged an elite ranger and an elite rogue (the ones who had set the mine cart trap) and seemed to have a pretty easy time with this encounter mostly due to the bard and tempest fighter taking out the rogue pretty quick.

After this the party proceeded on and basically plowed through 2 different rooms that served as barracks that were full of bandits. These encounters were a lot of fun and took up much of the session. Before I go on I should note that Amanda begged me to let her change her doppelganger sorcerer for a deva druid, which was fine by me. I can totally picture a deva druid living out in the Great Black Swamp which surrounds Punjar. Anyways in these encounters the druid was able to do some decent damage to the weaker bandits with her Flame Seed attack as the bard and tempest fighter ganged up on the bigger guys. Amongst all this Bart the minotaur was wailing on any bandit brave enough to step up to the front lines. After looting all of the bodies and ransacking the rooms, including a couple of other empty rooms and stumbling upon a small – ok huge – treasure stash the group moved on.

Honestly, I think the only real complaint I or Antioch have about the Dungeon Crawl Classics so far is the treasure parcels. Back when I ran Forges of the Mountain King I handed the module over to Antioch and let him just totally redesign all of the the treasure in the module to sync with the treasure parcel list in the DMG. While this has been my favorite DCC so far the treasure handed out to the party seems more than a little too generous. One parcel to note, in the Cleric’s Chamber in the bandit lair, the party can stumble upon 55 platinum pieces after a DC 25 thievery check. I have decided not to fix it this time and just see how much money the party ends up with at the end of this adventure, and check it to their level to see if it’s unbalanced.

Moving on, the party stumbled upon said Ceric’s Chamber and explored it a little, and spied a man holding a flaming longsword watching them from the hall a bit ahead of them. When they spotted him he immediately turned around and entered another room, slamming a door behind him.

I think it was Bart who kicked the door in, finding Haledon, the finely dressed bandit leader, sitting at his desk, watching them and looking a bit defeated. Talibah the tiefling bard stepped up and Antioch rolled pretty high on his Diplomacy check.

They were able to find out more about the “witch” who had hired the bandits to exume bodies for her in Punjar’s vast graveyard, but that even he had not seen her, only communicating through her raven familiar. He knew that she was living in the old abandoned windmill, but has been too afraid to approach it. They learned that she was raising the bodies as undead minions and stashing them in various places around Punjar and that she was planning to attack someone within Punjar very soon. One of the main places she was stashing the undead was in some family tomb inside Punjar’s graveyard ward known as the City of the Dead. The party wondered if it was the same tomb they have been hired to investigate by the Dev’shirs.

Haledon tried to reason with them that he was just trying to make a living the same way they were and that their paths just happen to cross. There was no reason to fight as the party had taken out most of the band he had spent so much time and resources building. That didn’t really work too well with Jester and Bart however. Also, as a way to scale down on the raining of treasure I role played Haledon into guilt-tripping the party from taking his +2 flaming longsword, stating that it was a family heirloom and that they could even have the clothes on his back if they would only leave him his sword. It worked. 😉

Knowing that they would be facing a lot of undead the group agreed that the next place to go was back into Punjar and see if they might be able to hire a cleric or paladin to take along with them to the tomb. We lost Adrian for this and the rest of the adventure who was playing Bart due to personal reasons, so Josh and Antioch have been taking turns playing Bart. I’m still deciding if the best course of action is take take Bart out, replacing him with a cleric of the same level, or have the party hire a 1st level cleric NPC. We shall see.

*Update

I am considering making the search for the cleric as maybe an urban skill challenge, though Antioch’s bard has a high Streetwise score. Suggestions are welcome.

Scions of Punjar: Session 1

*Spoilers*

Cast:

Jester – Halfling Tempest Fighter
Talibah – Tiefling Bard
Bart – Minotaur Fighter
Ayla – Doppleganger Chaotic Sorcerer
Willy – Halfling Rogue

The premise of the hook for this adventure was that the current party was the same group who had been previously hired by Punjar’s Thieves Guild to take out someone called The Beggar King, and by eliminating him eliminating a threat to the entire city. This is when I ran Sellswords of Punjar a few months back. Since Players Handbook 2 previews are out I let the players in the group make new characters, as long as we assumed this was the same adventuring band from the previous adventure. Anyways, after dispatching the Beggar King rumor of the event spread and the group started bulding a reputation within Punjar, reaching one Lady Dev’shir, of a minor noble family within Punjar, who’s foppish son Elam had discovered a family heirloom ( a necklace) in a pawn shop – an heirloom that was known to be buried in the family tomb. Enraged by this and the fact that her son was visiting the pawn shops and therefore gambling again she sent him, alone, to a tavern known as the Laughing Manitcore within the Devil’s Thumb ward of Punjar, where the band of sellswords were known maintain as a base of operations.

As Elam entered the Laughing Manticore, early in the afternoon, he immediately spotted the party as they were the only ones in the place. Incredibly nervous at being in this part of town, Elam approached the group and stutteringly came right out with the proposal, that “Mother” was willing to hire them for a job, and pay a hefty sum to have it taken care of. Bart could smell Elam’s fear and jocularly put his arm around Elam, disturbing him more as Jester continued to throw large knives at a dart board on the wall. Part of the deal, Elam told them as beads of sweat poured from his forehead, was that they must escort him back home.

The Party met with Lady Dev’shir at the family estate where she further explained the job, the pay of 1,000 gp each, and gave the party directions to both the pawn shop and the Dev’shir family tomb. The party decided to investigate the pawn shop, hoping to find any leads as to who had sold the necklace.

The party entered Oskar’s Pawn shop and began to ask about the necklace, finding Oskar to be quite tight lipped. When diplomacy didn’t work Bart had to be held back from tearing up the place. It was Intimidate Skill Test time and he successfully made his intimidate checks and Oskar reluctantly informed them that he received it from a regular customer name Latimer, but did not know where Latimer acquired it. This is one of the best parts of the module to me so far – the listed Skill Tests for interacting with Oskar. I really like 4th Edition Skill Challenges, and despite what some grognards say, it does leave social role playing in tact. It actually makes it more challenging while making the character’s actual abilities a factor. So much for 4E’s loss of realism. Anyway Oskar also informed them that Latimer can usually be found at a tavern known as the Famished Froghemoth, and gave them a description of the half-orc. Because Talibah did roll some good numbers during her Diplomacy Skill Test, I did not have Oskar alert the Souk (ward) guard, and the party headed for the tavern – leaving the shop intact ;).

The party entered the bustling tavern and started to discreetly ask around about Latimer, well almost discreetly. Bart decided to intimidate one of the serving wenches (rolling really high) and she angrily told him that he was a regular gambler here, then not so politely told him to leave. All the while Talibah was sitting down near the hearth playing her flute. After a short while the group noticed a very suspicious looking tiefling with two thugs enter the place, obviously looking around for someone or something. Not long after that the front door opens and a half-orc matching Latimers description starts to walk in, eying the tiefling he gasps and turns right around, the three pursuing him out the door. The party quickly follows and initiative is rolled, the fight taking place in a back alley.

The two thugs are disposed and the party makes a deal with the tiefling – that he can have Latimer, they just want to question him first, and he accepts, knowing that continuing the fight would not be in his favor. Latimer is intimidated into spilling the beans: that he is a member of a group of bandits who have been holding up in an abandonded iron mine outside the city, where it is located, and that they have been hired by some spooky witch to exhume bodies from the City of the Dead ward. He doesn’t know why and doesn’t care, only happy to be pocketing shiny trinkets off the corpses he can sell for gambling money. Armed with the information they leave Latimer to his fate and head back to the Dev’shir estate.

Lady Dev’shir is only more infuriated by this information and the pay is raised to 1,200 gp each if the party can put a stop to whatever it is that’s going on. She urges them to go to the family tomb to make sure it is secure, however the party decides to head straight for the bandit’s lair. “Fish rot from the head down,” Talibah remarked.

The party made their way into the abandoned iron mine and snuck up on a group of orcs sitting around a table, playing a game of knucklebones. They took out all but one, including an orc cleric, and forced him onto surrendering, and this is where the session ended. It’s always best to end a session on a cliffhanger, even when it’s one as simple as that.

Overall I really like this module, and the group really liked it as well. Looking forward to the next session.